IYA: Songs for the Mothers

For their fifth album, London's Afro-Cuban community choir build on their tradition of performing songs to the Orishas (Yoruba deities) backed by batá drums, handclaps, guiro, beaded shekere and other ancestral instruments. Partly produced mid-pandemic, some tracks are performed by a smaller choir. But punch is never lacking, and the switch between smaller and larger ensembles arguably expands the repertoire. IYA (‘Mother’ in Yoruba) kicks off with the quietly intense ‘Mama Francisca (Espiritismo)’, which sways between spirited a cappella and tentative-seeming percussion. Next up, ‘Oshun Talade’ a song borne out of a Zoom workshop, melds Trinidadian Orisha, Brazilian Candomblé and Cuban Lucumi; the infectious call-and-response opens up to allow in stirring solo leads. A remix of the same song closes the album, with electronic pulses and a driving beat showing that this choir has found groove as well as god.

Some songs are more free-form and searching, and the overall emotion across all eight is contemplative, even pained, rather than praise-the-lord upbeat. There's something about London Lucumi's work that is inward-looking and quite private, and I can imagine it moves and motivates most audiences that are spiritually initiated. Perhaps you have to be in the choir to really live, and love, this sound. But the field recording quality is what gives it authenticity and a kind of collective angst.